


A Hundred Days

by twofoldAxiom



Series: sea stories [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Elements, Gardens of Coral and Pearl, Gen, Sea Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: You lean closer, twisting in on yourself until you’re no taller than he is. He watches with something approximating fear but that mostly brings to mind curiosity, and apprehension, less at the sinuous wrongness of your form and more at the possibility of an attack.Your body drips with reforming flesh until you stand on the skiff with him, back straight and eyes narrow. He relaxes his hold on the tiller when you don’t make a move towards him, but there’s a tense moment between the two of you nonetheless where all you can hear is the faint slap of water on the hull.You break it first.“Speak.”***James Garen Egbert, King of what once were the Golden Isles, presents a trade to the fearsome King of Dragons.(Intermission/side story from Gardens of Coral and Pearl.)
Series: sea stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659304
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. The Bargain

**Author's Note:**

> Man this is old.
> 
> But still good!
> 
> I didn't think of publishing this separately from Gardens of Coral and Pearl until now, but I figured it was so tonally different from the rest of the story that it could go in its own place. Please enjoy!

_Long ago, before the last of the Golden Kings._

“Excuse me.”

The wind tousles the white sail of the little skiff this human is perched in, where he stands shivering and soaked with sea spray, and yet he squares his shaking shoulders and straightens his back tall as he can manage.

“Is this Dragon’s Gate? It matches the descriptions given to me, but I don’t have the personal experience to tell. Sorry to be a bother.”

It would be charming if it weren’t so surreal, this sunburnt figure bobbing on the waves. It was an age when the men of dry land knew magic in the world, when they told themselves stories in fear of those beneath the waves, and yet here he is. To have one dare to come to Dragon’s Gate, without an army, with nothing but his wits and his crown and his rickety little boat is strange enough to stop you from capsizing him out of spite.

You lean closer, twisting in on yourself until you’re no taller than he is. He watches with something approximating fear but that mostly brings to mind curiosity, and apprehension, less at the sinuous wrongness of your form and more at the possibility of an attack.

Your body drips with reforming flesh until you stand on the skiff with him, back straight and eyes narrow. He relaxes his hold on the tiller when you don’t make a move towards him, but there’s a tense moment between the two of you nonetheless where all you can hear is the faint slap of water on the hull.

You break it first.

“Speak.”

You see him gulp, threatening to crumble in on himself, but he straightens his shoulders once more until he’s even with you, until he’s almost worthy of the poor, tarnished crown he bears on his brow.

“I am James Garen Egbert, King of what once were the Golden Isles. I’ve come to make a deal with the King of Dragons, in the name of my own people, to the East of here.” His voice stays level, as do his eyes, but there’s something desperate in his tone, and he hasn’t even really said anything yet except that he’s doing his best to sound grand.

You would laugh if you weren’t so insulted. You almost do; a smile tugs at your mouth. “But who are you here, with no armies and no kingdom, to dare come to the mouth of Dragon’s Gate with no word or summons from the King of Dragons himself? Who are you, to keep your soul as your own and set your course for here at all?”

You circle him in the boat, barely making a sound on the boards. “What are you after? Treasure? Knowledge? You will take none of it from here, nothing of which you can bring back to your people. I, _I_ am the King of Dragons, ruler of the sea, he whose blood runs with the magic that moves through the oceans of the world, he by whose word the sea storms rage and recede. My name is the sound of a rising tide, the glint of a hundred teeth in the depths, the crackle of lightning spreading across waves.”

You sneer down at him.

“And you. You child. You _whelp_. You would barter with me?”

“Well, yes.” He doesn’t even hesitate, instead carefully feeling his way across the boat, towards a lump in corner that you hadn’t noticed until now. You bristle as he turns his back to you, and you think of how easy it would be to sink your claws into him and be done with this foolish thing.

Something stops you, and you’re not sure what, but you don’t have the time to puzzle it out before he kneels before you and empties out the sack he’d brought with him. The sack itself is woven, but thin and fine, waterproofed with some kind of oil. Whatever’s inside, it’s worth the trouble of keeping it dry at sea, at least to him. He speaks to you while he unwraps it.

“This really was a last resort for us, and I had to pay my way here, so there isn’t as much as there would have been at the beginning of this journey. A ruby here, a sapphire there; but overall it’s intact, so I hope it’s a suitable offering.” There’s another cloth bundle inside, apparently to keep whatever it is from jostling around. When he unwraps it, he holds it up to the light.

“The first queen’s crown.” He says. The filigree is bent and cracked, and a number of the jewels are missing, their settings bent out of shape by the force it clearly took to remove the stones. It’s finely wrought, for the crudity of human craft. “I offer you this, the last of my kingdom’s treasures, in exchange for a year’s prosperity by your magic.”

He bows his head and holds it out to you, cradling it in his fingers with more than metal and stone- with the hope of his people, with their desperation and fear, this child king daring to come to Dragon’s Gate because there’s no other recourse he can think of but your power.

Gently, you pluck the crown from his hands. He looks up at you as he feels the weight lift from his fingers, and there’s a certain vulnerability there, there’s surprise and gratitude and anguish as you take his kingdom’s last treasure from him.

You fling it into the sea.

“I have a better proposal.” You tell him, tilting his face up towards you. He looks like he’s in shock, though you suppose that isn't too surprising a reaction. You cup his cheeks in your hands, sneering down at him. "I can think of a treasure more precious than a human trinket."

"That was all we had left from the treasury. That was the only thing I could bring.” He looks up at you at last. “What else is there to give?”

You smile. 

~!~

"A hundred days." He repeats, for the hundredth time since you'd brought him down to the gate itself. You'd set magic into the stone he wore clasped at his throat, to let him breathe- but only as long as he stayed within the confines of your palace. He fiddles with it now, obviously contemplating the consequences of tearing it away and throwing it where you'd thrown his trinket.

You stop him with a hand on his shoulder, each claw longer than a single joint on one of his own fingers. "A hundred days you will wait to die. Make no mistake: It will be a painless death, your body intact when I send it back for a _king's_ funeral. But your heart will remain under the waves when you leave."

He traces the spiraling lines of the pendant as you continue to speak, as you squeeze at the too-thin skin so close to his throat. "With your return to the Golden Isles will be a hundred generations of prosperity after you. Your people will flourish, far beyond what you can imagine." You smile again, and you see your own teeth in the vitreous gleam of the walls- hundreds of your own face smile back at you, the points glimmering like pearl and sharper than any beast. "Not that you'll be there to see it, and that's if you succeed. This is the price you pay for my magic, and I will take no less."

He straightens when you let go of him, and he takes his hands from the necklace. You can see it weigh on him, the mark of his imprisonment and a reminder of his fate, of the gravity and price of his insult, should he choose to pay it for his people. You don't expect him to, of course. He's a child, and a human, and your encounters with humans have always made them out to be willing to trade a hundred lives for a day of their own.

How could he trade _one_ day of his own, let alone a hundred? But he sets his lips in a thin line and turns his head to face you, and the light in his eyes tells you he won't back down, not yet.

You give him three days, in your mind, before his will to live overpowers him. You can't fault him so, with his little skiff tethered in the easy reach of the Gate's mouth, but it will be a bitter lesson to bear for him and all the sweeter for you.

~!~

He stays for the three days that you count in your head.

You can watch him as you please, of course. He's miserable, but he bears it admirably, shivering in the room you'd had drained and dried for him. A spelled hole in the wall, once a broken window, now instead provides a small spring of fresh water for him to drink, or bathe in, if he takes a basin to it. His skin had reddened and crusted with salt the first two days, and while you didn't want things getting _comfortable_ for him, you didn't want to seem like you were making things unfair. 

This was unfair, and you knew so, now that a few days had passed, but this was for your pride, too, and your pride wouldn't let it so obviously be.

You watched him closely, though. He never asked for anything, and it seems he would have gladly borne the indignity of being kept in a bubble as he was without complaint, at least for the first week. He'd already lasted longer than you'd expected him to.

~!~

He stays for another two weeks. You’d actually forgotten he was there, until he went and started showing up in other parts of your palace.

He hasn’t noticed you yet, either, too engrossed in a sea-silk scroll that you know he can’t read, it’s not meant to be _read_ , but he follows the lines of stitching like he might divine some meaning from them all the same.

You leave him to it until you find yourself frustrated by just watching. You’re not sure why. Maybe it’s the futility of his attempt, or how it reminds you that he’s here in the first place, that he has two more months promised to him, if he can bear it. It curls something fierce and terrible in your gut, that he's still trying, and you _know he won't make it, why draw it out_?

He looks up.

You scowl as he smiles, and he rolls up the scroll clumsily, and then swims just as clumsily back to his quarters.

You have better things to do than watch him. You have a kingdom to run, while his, likely as anything, flounders without him.

~!~

He's still there by the next full moon, and your patience has run thin. Who does he think he is, to test you like this? He must be mocking you. No human in your long life has ever withstood a test like this; you're young for a dragon and younger still for a king, but you've lived a long enough life to know the workings of man. This is spite on his part, that he's stayed this long, risking his life as he is.

You find him with the scrolls again and this time you make certain that he knows you're there, and when he looks at you, you gesture for him to follow. If you swim a little faster than needed, then it's only enough that he knows he has to make haste. 

Your body shifts as you swim, until you're in the form you'd taken the throne in, a furlong from the sharp point of your nose to the trailing fins of your tail. You swim to the mouth of the gate, and while it's riddled with barnacles and bits of algae, his skiff is still there, still whole, waiting where you'd left it for him, and where you'd expected he'd have taken it by now. You frown at it, your tail lashing, and the movement makes the little boat bob in the too-still water. You're still waiting there for him when he finally catches up, breathing hard when he takes the first gulp of air he must have had since you'd brought him here.

You lift him into the little boat, and his legs are too weak to stand, for how long he's been in the water, how little time he's spent in the room you'd given him and how hard he must have had to swim to keep up with you. He looks up at you in confusion.

"Go home." You say. "Don't keep up this _farce_. You and I both know that you never meant to make a hundred days, and I've lost my patience with your games."

But the insolent little thing he is, he struggles to stand, shaking all over.

"This was never a game to me." He says. "I can't go back."

He pitches himself over the edge of the boat in a way that leaves no doubt that it's on purpose.

You stare at the ripples he leaves, at the boat bobbing ever so slightly from the movement, and then you realize he's not through with you yet.


	2. The Promise

You think he's trying to make a point of showing up where you'll find him, now that he's made his defiance, his intention, as clear as he can. 

He's not tailing you. He's too slow in the water for that. But he's showing up in more of the places you find your focus drawn, or perhaps your focus is drawn there because he's beginning to make this place a home.

You find him puzzling over the silk scrolls again, murmuring silently to himself and tracing his fingers along the bumps of embroidery. The threads were sewn in with fishbone needles, each strand spun finer than a quartered hair so they lie almost flat on the page, and yet he tries and tries despite not knowing the words.

You find him, sometimes, in your own throne room. You see him among your courtiers, asking about your world, your culture, your territories beyond the gate itself, the stretches of land beneath the water where he cannot go. He asks, though you force yourself to only catch snatches when you listen, so as not to get lost in it, if there are other kings and other kingdoms.

You find him mostly in his room, the one you'd given him. It's starting to feel less like a prison, where he's borrowed maps of your domain to pore over as if he's hoping he might see them someday. He's collected shells and bones and bits of coral from the sea floor, and he's asked someone to teach him how to read the stitching script in the scrolls. You think to yourself- you wonder- what it could be that's keeping him here when you'd given him the choice of his freedom, when you'd made it plain what you thought of his attempt at saving his people.

You refuse to consider that perhaps he meant what he said, but now you're beginning to doubt yourself. 

He looks up from the scroll he's trying to study, a child's story, presumably when he hears the ripples against the edge of the tiles as you sink back down. It doesn't matter. He has two months left; plenty of time for a human will to break.

~!~

Two more weeks pass by. He's gone halfway through the time you'd agreed on by now, and it sours your mood whenever you're reminded of it. But you have to commend him on his dedication, bitter as it makes you.

It surprises you when you find he's made some kind of nest in that room of his, and surprises you more when you realize you're starting to think of it as really _his_. He's collected an assortment of garbage, really, but they fascinate him to no end- skeletons now, painstakingly tied together with sea silk, and whole shells and live corals that he keeps on the stairs leading into the water, arrayed like a naturalist's finest specimens.

You admit to yourself that it annoys you, realizing he's befriended a couple of the servants despite barely being able to speak to them. You remind them sternly, when you find them, that he's either going to leave forever or die, and they return to their work in sullen silence, but you notice a number of treasures being strewn about his room next. Human cups fromshipwrecks, coins dredged from the sea floor, even a mirror, thoroughly stained with algae, but whole and surprisingly clear.

You let it pass. You expected reminding him of home might weaken his resolve. You're not sure why you're surprised when he's still there another week later, and you're not sure why your mood darkens further when he smiles at you, bright and blithe with his too-blunt teeth. 

If anything, it's concerning that you don't know. That you don't know means you're not sure how you'll feel when he leaves, or if it comes to it, when you take his heart.

It's starting to feel like that might actually be possible. You can almost feel it, warm and alive between your claws.

~!~

It takes until the sixtieth day for you to admit that he's really determined to do this, and the sixty-fifth to admit that you're worried. Not for him, but for your courtiers and your palace keepers and all the servants he's managed to win over. You can recognize the warmth they regard him with, the younger ones especially. It's common knowledge throughout the court what he's here for and how long he has left, but it's been so long since an outsider had come to the Gate. A land dweller, no less.

It gets to the point that you almost consider sparing him, and sending him back with the boon of your magic regardless of everything.

But neither your pride nor your word can take that, no. It keeps you up while you're coiled in the darkness of your own chambers, watching the moonlight filter through the water. In the distance you can see the light he keeps in his bubble, can vaguely see the silhouette he makes against the luminescent glass as he pores over another map.

You unwind yourself from your cavern. The soft, spongy coral you sleep in just barely stirs with the water as you slither towards the caverns below, the hallway that leads to his room, and as you make your way there your form melts and ripples until you're just about his size. 

There's no sound you make as you rise from the pool hollowed into the edge of his room, but he looks up all the same when your foot makes the first step onto the tile.

"Your Majesty." He nods, and the corner of his mouth tilts up like he's telling a private joke, though not a meanspirited one; supposedly, you're in on it, but you don't feel much like you're in on this joke at all.

You stand in front of him, where he's sitting cross-legged on the floor with another children's story, and you think it probably isn't very comfortable but someone has given him a mat of woven kelp fronds to sit on, or perhaps for sleeping. They've been meticulously dried, and probably took a while to assemble into a large enough thing, and there's a couple cushions of the same kelp, stuffed with what you think is probably sea grass.

Gifts, you realize. They've been making this room more comfortable for him, and he has thirty five days left to live, if he doesn't leave sooner than that. You run a hand across your face before you sit down across from him.

But you don't say a word of that, you have other things to say first.

"What are you doing?" You ask him. Your voice sounds strange here, quieter, less commanding. He smiles and spreads his hands across the silk pages, trying to spread them flat for you, but you shake your head. "I know you're trying to read that, and I know my courtiers are getting fond of you. Why are you doing this, when you know if you don't leave, you're going to die?"

He pauses. You expect him to brush you off with a joke. Instead, he speaks somberly, and you almost hear... pain, you think, somewhere in his voice.

"I've made my promise. A hundred days for a hundred generations, you said, and I accepted it. I know you think it's for my pride, but that never concerned me; not when I've lost everything to be proud of. You gave me the choice to leave, but then my people would suffer if I did. What sort of a king would I be if I did that?"

You don't answer. There's nothing you can answer with. But he smiles at you, and there's a different color to it now; he smiles at you with the full belief that you _will_ grant him what you'd promised, at the cost of his life.

He trusts you, is the thing, and he trusts you to keep a promise he'll never see. He trusts you with the future of his people.

Your frown deepens, and he stops smiling when you reach forward and grab him by the front of his shirt, salt-stained and ragged now. He doesn't even have the decency to look _scared_ , merely concerned, like he'd said something rude.

"Listen to me." You hiss, right in his face. "Your people will forget your sacrifice. Your name will fade from memory. Humans, no matter how far they they range on the surface, are the same in this respect: They forget their heroes, they let them fade into legend, and then they let them fade into nothing at all."

Your hands are shaking, and you only realize it when he wraps his own around your wrists; they're warm and broad, worn from sun and and wind, rope and salt, the fingers rough but careful. You grip tighter and draw him a little closer, looking him in the eye. "I don't want to kill you, not anymore. But I've made my promise. More than that, I've made it _heard._ Do you understand, you fool? You _will_ die, and so few of your own are going to remember you, two or three generations from now. Why don't you _care?_ "

"It's worth it." He says, rubbing your hands, as if to placate you like a child, as if you aren't hundreds of years older than he, if not more. "It's worth it for them."

"It _isn't._ " You hiss back. You remember your father, and his father before him. Your father had killed your grandfather in his ascension, and you had killed your own in yours. Though he was old and feeble, and it was mercy to snap his neck and devour his heart, you know you're the only one left who remembers. You remember, and you know so few of your courtiers at present do now no matter how they remember their legends. "They will forget you."

No matter the stories, they don't remember _them._ Not their warmth, not their wisdom, not their souls.

He shakes his head. "Their memory doesn't make this worth it. Their happiness does."

You fall silent, and very slowly, you let go of him. When you compose yourself, he does look a little pale, but it could be a trick of the glowing coral outside the walls, blue-green and silvery.

"You are too good of a man to be a king." You say, as you turn away from him. "You should have been a despot. Your people remember their tyrants."

"And they would be miserable." He says, his lips pressed into a line now, unsmiling and stern. He looks older, though you're not sure if he's truly grown or it's because of what you've heard. "Were I a tyrant, I would never have come this far."

You think he'd be surprised, to know of the tyrants that have come seeking treasure here. But you don't have it in you to tell him, now, and you hate that you've been silenced so; you feel it sit in your gut like molten stone, like rotten flesh. You hate that this smiling boy before you wears a crown and bears its weight with more grace than the kings who've come before him.

"You would live." You say, so quietly you could swear you hear the currents outside the walls.

"Maybe I would." He answers, sitting back down on his mat, gathering his story to read where he'd left off. You see his mouth shiver despite the tight line of it, the weight of it all over his head, and you don't know if he's about to laugh again or if he's really about to cry. "I suppose we'll never know."

You stare as, very quietly, he murmurs another mangled poem to himself. His pronunciation is too nasal and light, his vowels too long. You remain silent until you can't take it anymore.

"What makes this worth it to you?" You narrow your eyes at him, as he looks up again.

"I've told you before, haven't I?" He looks back down. "I want my people to be happy. I want them to flourish, with or without me."

"But why?"

He stops, and looks you in the eye, and you remember it like he'd scored the words into your bones, bright and merciless.

"Because if I failed them, I wouldn't be able to live with myself."


	3. The End

The last of his days pass in a haze. 

You almost forget he's there, save for the brightness in the water when he passes with a guide, a glowfish in a bubble-like cage, or your servants and courtiers telling you where he is, what he's doing, what a wonderful and curious guest you've brought them; how sad they will be to see him die. 

Then the sun came to set on the hundredth day. You watched that day pass to the taste of bile on your teeth, like an eel's bladder gone putrid, burst on your tongue; you knew what must be done, and it soured your belly that much further.

And why should you care, that he was going to die? You shouldn't. Regardless, you did. You swam to his rooms languidly, to tell him he'd won, and what he'd won, and at what cost. To seal the deal and take his heart. You rehearsed what you were going to say, carefully, like when you were much, much younger and had to rehearse your father's dying rites.

When you surfaced from the pool and looked around, you didn't see him at first. You thought perhaps, on this last day, his fears finally caught up with him, and you smiled to yourself at the thought that you were right, bitterly so, but at least he would live. You would call up a servant to clear out the room, and throw away or maybe give away the things he'd asked for, and return your books and scrolls where they belonged.

Slowly, silently, you ascended the steps, slimy and smooth underfoot but without leaving a single hitch in your stride, his specimens already cleared away. It was only when your foot met the dry, cool tile that you faltered, slipped even, but you caught yourself against the wall in surprise.

He was still here, after all. Somehow you hadn't seen him, until he stirred under a sheet of dried, woven kelp, scrolls and sun stones scattering as he moved. Had he buried himself in them?

He looks surprised to see you. "I was only having a nap." He says, rubbing his eyes. You hate that he smiles at you, and feel a kind of ache when he winces. "It's not the best place for a nap, though, is it? I wish I could sleep in the water like you do, it must be much more comfortable. Colder, too, though; that _would_ be a problem."

"I've come to give you _one_ last chance." You say. He looks surprised, as you scowl down at him. "Your life is forfeit unless you leave _now_ , and I will rend your little boat in half with a swipe of my own tail if you don't take it and sail back to your wretched little kingdom."

"Stubborn one, aren't you?"

He stands up, stumbling, wincing again.

"And my leg's fallen asleep on me. I don't think it will look very dignified to show up to my own execution with a pins-and-needles sort of limp. But that _is_ where I'm headed. Not home, after I've spent the full hundred days here; I've spent a hundred days too many just sitting around while my people _starve_."

You pause, and your head even pulls back a fraction of an inch in surprise, the fins framing your face flattening against the sides of your skull. There's that ice and steel in his eyes again, even with the mirthful little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. There's an edge in his voice that threatens to cut into you, a sound like the splitting edge of a spear. 

He takes a step forward, and despite yourself, you almost, _almost_ , take a step back.

"Don't wreck the boat, though." He says, holding up his hands to show them empty, to show that he has nothing that he could ( _imagine that he could_ ) harm you with. His smile comes a little more sincerely. "I think it might be better for you to send my body back in it. As proof that it's really me, of course. I've lost the First Queen's crown, as it is; I don't think I have anything left that could identify me back home."

Something about that comes out wrong enough that you ask before you can stop yourself. You ask, quietly, more quietly than you know what to do with. "Wouldn't your people know your face?"

It's his turn to look surprised. "Oh." He touches his cheek, runs his thumb along what you think might be a scar. "I hadn't realized... no, they wouldn't. Let me tell you a story, if you would kindly listen to a dead man's wish."

You let him, and he tells you of home, of trees heavy with fruit and birds and branches that that he'd climbed as a boy, and a wind that burned warm with spices from the marketplace, even as far below the palace as it was. He tells you of a people that sailed scared and broken across the sea, until they found paradise and named it the Golden Isles, flourished under the sun and wind that yielded them their fruit and grain. He tells you of how they loved their first king, strong and broad-backed and sly, that led them across the waves to their new home.

They loved him so much they couldn't bear to see him die, and when he did, the royal family vowed that no one would ever know. Kings from then on, when crowned, wore masks and veils that bore the first king's face.

He tells you how, outside of the palace, none of his own people had ever seen him without something between them.

He tells you why he's here. He tells you of the waves that crushed the fishing boats and the fishermen, threw them against the rocks and cliffs. He tells you of the storms stirred in the bellies of mountains, cold and merciless, followed by mud and rock slides that made tombs of houses, the flash floods, the fear. He tells you of how, even after all this, his people sought to remake their paradise from their ruin, praying in the frigid night to gods new and old. 

"Praying to their immortal king." He finished, and the thin line of his mouth pressed tight in what might have been a frown. "A fraud."

"How fitting." You watch him as impassively as you can make yourself. You don't care for his people, for what they've lost. "It's for this that you would give your life, and in doing so expose your family's greatest lie?"

"Must I repeat myself? It was hard enough telling it the first time. Besides." The smile returns, impish, but with that edge you could bleed on. Not a child any longer. "They must think I've abandoned them. But I won't. I don't have the heart in me to do so."

Even now, he can find it in him to tell such a joke. He turns away from you, and you rest a hand on his shoulder.

"You have one more night, then, and I take your heart at dawn. Do you have any final requests?"

"Hm." He rubs his chin. There's hair on it, bristly and dark, and it seems to give him an idea. "Some kind of blade, and some oil. I'd like a shave." He turns to look at you over his shoulder. "And if that seems too simple for you, I'd like to sleep in a bed tonight, and to have a pleasant dream or two."

Despite yourself, you smile.

~!~

It's oddly fascinating to watch the ritual he prepares with the cut-glass blade he's provided, the stoppered bottle of carefully melted fat one of your alchemists had (in a hurry, in a rage) managed to produce. He washes his face thoroughly, and even cuts the hair on it as closely as he can without hurting himself, before he smears the fat onto his skin.

You think that's where it stops, and you wonder what it's supposed to do, until he surprises you again by swiping the blade very carefully across his the side of his face. Clumps of bristly hair and animal fat are scraped away, leaving smooth skin behind. He touches the skin in almost as much surprise as you look at it, though instead of being horrified like you might expect, he smiles.

"Looks like I'll be looking my best when my time comes. As close to my best as I've been able to in a while, at least." He says, running a finger along his cheek. "Better not do things halfway, then."

He hums to himself as he works, though you're not sure if it's some kind of nonsense tune he's made up or a song from home. He works slowly, carefully; four little scrapes with the blade at a time before he wipes it off on a kelp sheet to keep it clean before he repeats the process over, and he never nicks himself once.

By the time he's done, he looks younger; younger than even he had when you'd first met him sunburnt and salt stained on the surface of the waves, bobbing in his little skiff with only an old crown left to his name. 

That crown lies at the bottom of the sea now, probably being reclaimed by coral and trash. Another lost treasure among thousands of lost treasures.

He wipes the last of the animal fat off his face and smiles brightly at you. His teeth and hair look better than they had when you'd met him, healthier; you realize he looks younger because you can see his cheeks filled in now, with the food you'd given him and the rest he'd taken. How ragged had he been running himself, questing across the sea for Dragon's Gate?

You don't smile back, but you gesture towards the pile of books and bedding you'd had your servants bring up for him. You suspect he'll spend the whole night reading as much as he can, torturing himself with memories and knowledge he won't be able to bring home. But you can easily suspect he'll sleep just fine, perhaps, knowing that he's won this over you, and secured a hundred generations for his people.

He's won your little game, and with it, your respect. This child king of land dwellers, this hopeful, noble fool... 

Well, he's earned it.

You slink into the water as he settles into the bedding, raised a little above the floor, and you dive down into the deeps until the light of his room is a distant, vitreous glow.

~!~

Dawn comes faster than you expect it to, and it was _you_ who spent the entire night awake. You sit upon your throne in as close to human form as you can, your back straight and your hands on the armrests, but your tail lashes long and sinuous as a gulping eel, flicking droplets of water into the cool, yellowy light.

When he rises out of the water, onto the platform before your throne, he bows. You're not sure if it's from the exertion of being made to swim his own way here, or if he means it as respect. It doesn't matter now. There's a lump in your throat as you tilt his face up, a stone in the back of your mind with the weight of wrongness and the remnants of your foolish pride, though you manage to speak around it.

"James Garen Egbert." You almost sneer, but he doesn't deserve that; your face and tone are perfectly even, though perhaps you do scowl. "You've won for the people of the Golden Isles a hundred generations of prosperity, and today, you die for it. Do you have any last words?"

"Of course." He says. You can feel the silence pressing in as your courtiers watch him, all perfectly composed, all waiting for what he says next when he turns to face the court. "Thank you. Thank you for taking my offer in the first place at all." He turns to face you, quieter than when he'd addressed the court; for you alone. "Thank you for what you're about to do. Sincerely. I'll die happy knowing my family will prosper."

So he has a family back home, then. You wonder if he has a child, a prince or princess, a memory that kept him warm. 

He nods.

"I'm ready."

Your fingers glow with all the might and power of the sea, and like breaking through the surface in a dive, you plunge your hand into his chest. 

He wheezes in shock, or maybe pain. It must hurt more than he was expecting as you close your hand around his thrumming, beating heart, and you start to pull.

To your amazement, he doesn't try to stop you. Tears stream down his face, but he keeps a brave one, mouth shut to muffle any noise as you slowly, inexorably, pull his heart out of him. There's no wound, but there's blood, all over your hand when you've drawn it out at last. He collapses against you, then, still warm, but no longer breathing.

You hold him close, and without a word, you crush his heart in your fist.

It's done.

~!~

The body looks peaceful when, with a wave of your hand, you restore his little skiff to its original state and two of your courtiers arrange him in it, pillowing his head on a fine skein of sea silk and other riches besides, a kingdom's worth of treasures made by your artisans or dredged from the trenches around the Gate. There's no weeping, because dragons don't weep, but there are whispers of mourning all around you, a susurrus of little blessings he'll bring home with him: For the fish to be plentiful in his people's nets, for every oyster found by a child to hold a pearl, for every lover waiting for a sailor to hear swift news of their beloved.

Two of your finest soldiers will take him back where he'd come from, guided by the stone you'd crushed out of his heart. They will come upon the land in the dead of night and seek his family, who will take the body and do with it what they will. They will bury the stone in the center of his kingdom, and there it will lay your blessing on the land for a hundred generations and more, should you live to maintain it for more than that.

When all your courtiers have gone beneath the waves, still you wait at the entrance of Dragon's Gate, wondering. Thinking. Your right hand is still crusted with human blood, darkening to the color of the coral around you. Bits of it flake away in the sea breeze, flecks of red dust crumbling off your fingers.

He was a good man, and perhaps you will wish you'd known him better before the offer you'd given him was made in your mind.

You will hold that thought against your own heart for the remainder of your days, and perhaps when you die and your son devours your heart, your secret will die with you.

The tale of James Garen Egbert and the hundred days he's spent in Dragon's Gate is over, and you wonder what will be told of him in a land you will never see.

END


End file.
